


The Rake of Red Cove

by oldsneakers



Series: Flight Rising Collection [2]
Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-12 19:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18452942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldsneakers/pseuds/oldsneakers
Summary: This piece follows a disgraced guardian as he flees his legacy.





	1. Oisin the Forgotten King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The guardian wishes on a falling star and goes to find its landing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a gift for Corycia. It originally had ingame item images as bits of flavor, but I couldn't get them to work on AO3.

You dream of the Cove again, as it was the last you visited: the tide heaves its burdens at your feet and you try not to cut yourself on this memory. The sun is red and wet, and though rank with rot the breeze is a blessing. It scatters a veil of Royal Lantana petals out to sea, and your eye chases after them while you remain ashore with your clan's festival spoils.

The dream-horizon resolves into true dawn, or what passes for it in the Tangled Wood, and you pat your pack to feel the reassuring shape of its cargo. Tiny fey constructs disperse from your creaky body as it stirs, as they have every morning since you entered the Foxfire Bramble to find the one rumored to help you. (It's chilly further in, and you can't begrudge the little--things--for cuddling.) After a too-light meal of Wisp Fruit, chewing and swallowing deliberately, you resume the-- the search.

An hour later you find icicles; teeth upon teeth upon teeth in this place. But amidst the snarling cold, something luxuriously, unexpectedly furry twines around your legs, purring. You blink-- and your eyelids stick, frozen.

"Well well well," the furry presence vanishes in a skitter of leaves, "look what the cat dragged in! _Without_. _Me_."

The speaker hisses and the cat hisses back, bristling.

You're a Dominance veteran feared and admired for your expediency--steadfast, the greenness of your youth petrified by war--and for this reason, you know immediately that this is someone to fear.

The speaker turns and you step back, despite knowing also that he is the one you've been looking for. Beneath his cowl, he inhales the frigid air and your fear-sweat with a shiver of relish. "Oh, that's good. That's very good." His teeth glitter like black ice and you hear the twinkling, shrieking drag of many chains as he approaches. Runes appear one by one alongside pulsing stars in the bellowing-dark space his kind absorbs. "This wish. It's yours, isn't it?"

It is a star. But more than that, it's your star: when it fell, you wished upon it and tracked its trajectory, on a wing and a prayer, to Oisin the Forgotten King of the Order of the Unremembered. To see it again, physical proof of your cowardice appraised by this minor god... Memories overtake you: the lily pads desiccated, the Striped Seal strangled in netting, the bottles and the beached bodies...

"I can't blame you for wishing that away, commoner. It's a juicy one. Killed your own Charge by mistake, eh? You couldn't pay me to eat that much grief. Or that much embarrassment for that matter." Oisin pinches and rubs your hideous wish between his talons like a bad penny. "...Unless there was a very, very silvery lining."

Dread begins to crystallize when his unseen gaze cuts to your pack. The cat returns, slithering like silk to banish your nausea.

"No," you snarl.

Oisin's chains yank and every star dies in the dark except yours. "...No?"

Your teeth chatter with the cold and the terror of defying this ancient, omniscient creature.

"Do you think I'll eat it too, Charge Slayer? Think I stayed imprisoned for a hundred years without learning the difference between destruction and sacrifice? Think I'd kill so many I couldn't tell them apart if I met my beloved among them? _You think_ ," Oisin smirks and clenches your fallen star like a stress ball, "I would spend an eternity earning my reputation _in name only_?"

You blink, and the tears frozen to your face shatter. Scenting success, the cat purrs and Oisin softens. He takes the pack from you and withdraws its contents with a single, rueful laugh. "Oh, commoner. You made this choice before you met me. _Because_ you chose to meet me. Go home and forget." He giggles suddenly, an immortal stricken by the black comedy of mortal tragedy, and pops your wishing star into his glittering mouth like a grape. "Sleep."

You forget.

For many nights after you return, your sleep is so deep and your dreams so sweet you awake smiling so widely it very nearly aches: you are more at peace than you can remember, for no reason at all that you can remember. And it's good.

It's very good.


	2. Armaghan, Shepherd of Sorrows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our guardian seeks alternative solutions when memory returns.

The serpentine night uncoils, and with it the sprite the nearby villagers call Armaghan. The lilliputian guardian stirs as his daybed begins to open to the moonlight, its petals and pistons turning like silken clockwork. You could not imagine a more delicious bed - no sweeter rest or rise to be had! So the villagers said and so the legend went: if you managed to catch Armaghan rising among his hundreds-million-bright herd of fireflies, you might be blessed with easy sleep for all the rest of your days. But such dreams, like all magic, ought never be taken at face value.

Doubt stays your claw, and the moment hangs like a tick upon a low branch. Would sleep - the innocent and pure sort you enjoyed as a hatchling - truly return to you in your miserable old age? How could it, if it hinged upon stealing something as innocent? The cricket's cage at your belt, fashioned over hours of peaceful toil, seems suddenly corrupt. The time you offered to it, freely and with wholehearted devotion, rots as it becomes aware of its true purpose. You did not even line it with grass for its tenant.

But the past wrenches and twists your arm, and the tick plummets. You drop to your knees with a hoarse cry of triumph, the moon's judgment obscured by your tears.

"I can't," you whisper. " _I can't_."

Perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour, passes, before the sting at your eyes resolves into a tickling balm. You startle and nearly dislodge Armaghan, who is harvesting your sorrows with a leafy pail of his own make. It drips, steadily, but as each tear passes through the pail it shimmers into a liquid light, purified and exorcised by some occult remedy.

"There you are!" he cries. "I thought you would never come!" Armaghan steps so, so softly over your swollen eyelids as he kisses them. Only when you focus can you can feel it. "Did you forget someone might Search for you, too?"

As a matter of fact, you had.


End file.
